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<title>Leaving You in the Dark by Uncle Asad (Uncle_Asad)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096189">Leaving You in the Dark</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uncle_Asad/pseuds/Uncle%20Asad'>Uncle Asad (Uncle_Asad)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Legacies (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A hint of Dark!Josie, Alyssa Chang’s machinations, Angst, F/F, Heartbreak, Not A Happy Ending, Spoilers through Legacies s03e03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:20:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uncle_Asad/pseuds/Uncle%20Asad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Josie were the one avoiding Hope after Hope woke up? What if Josie had a reason? What if that reason would tear the two friends apart?</p><p>Set between <em>Legacies</em> s03e03 and s03e04 (let’s pretend there was a meaningful time gap between them), and Hope and Landon are broken up.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Leaving You in the Dark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This idea about Josie being the one avoiding Hope (and why) came to me in the shower, and I banged this out in about an hour. I’m not sure Josie’s reason, and why that reason made her act how she acted, is fully and properly developed, but I hope it comes through.</p><p>And maybe this is <em>my</em> dark revenge on all those stories that rend my Hosie heart  in two….</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hope Mikaelson was studying that evening in the Stefan Salvatore Memorial Library when, from the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of yellow round the corner and immediately turn back whence it came. Hope bolted upright and dashed in the direction of the flash, wishing for a moment that she had activated her vampire side and had vamp speed at her disposal. After all, she had just made an unconfirmed sighting of the most magnificent of creatures, the elusive Josie Saltzman, whom she had not seen since awakening from her sleep after Josie’s Dark side turned her into stone in Josie’s subconscious.</p><p>When she rounded to corner, she saw, halfway down the hall, the telltale silhouette of Josie Saltzman…pulling a suitcase!? “Josie, wait!” Hope called out, chasing after the brunette siphon. Much to the tribrid’s dismay, Josie kept on walking—though at least the former witch didn’t increase her speed. The auburn-haired girl finally caught up with her quarry as they were passing through the foyer, headed towards the main entrance. “Josie…what’s the rush? Are you going to spend time with your mom again?” Before giving the brunette a chance to respond, Hope added, “And why have you been avoiding me? I haven’t been able to find you <em>anywhere</em>, and Lizzie keeps telling me ‘She just needs some time,’ but I know that’s not it…at least not all of it.” After a beat, she pleaded, “Josie, please, talk to me. Lizzie said you never came to see me when I was asleep, and the one time she dragged you, you turned and fled like a child from a hot stove. What…what…did I do?”</p><p>Without stopping, Josie finally turned her head to face Hope, a deep and devastating sadness engraved on her face. The brunette finally began to speak, voice soft and sad, “I’m sorry, Hope. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to <em>leave</em> you….”</p><p>Hope looked back at the chocolate eyes of her best friend, of the only person she could trust and rely on, the one she would move heaven and earth—and a prison world or two—to save, the person she knew she had fallen irrevocably in love with while she was paying attention to other things. As they passed through the school doors, they both had wounded expressions on their faces, Hope’s mixed with confusion and Josie’s with regret. “What’s going on, Josie? Please, tell me. Whatever it is, we can figure it out together.”</p><p>At that moment, Josie passed outside the covered entryway and Hope found herself colliding with an invisible barrier, trapping her inside that portico, only a few feet from where Landon had kissed her after returning and breaking up with Josie the past winter. “It’s not your fault, Hope,” Josie began again, voice cloaked in sadness. “It’s me. It’s always been me.”</p><p>“Jo…you’re not making any sense…what’s going on?” Hope choked out franticly.</p><p>“I realized that it was the Darkness…it was always the Darkness….” Josie began sobbing.</p><p>“What do you mean the darkness?” Hope replied, pushing wildly against the invisible barrier keeping them apart, trying every spell that she could think of to break it.</p><p>“The part of me that loved you,” Josie choked out amidst her sobs. “It was never the part of me that you loved, the good part of me…. It was the Darkness.”</p><p>“No…!” the auburn-haired girl wailed, tears beginning to flow from her eyes as well.</p><p>“From the very beginning, it was the Dark part of me that loved you. Do you remember the first thing we did together after the fire fiasco? Black magic. ‘Kindred souls in revenge,’ remember? When I was so obsessed with you after you came back from Malivore? The Dark was rising; I was doing black magic…”</p><p>“We’re more than that, Josie. We’ve done so many things these past two years…” Hope interrupted, before being interrupted by Josie in turn.</p><p>“And when I had fully given in to the Darkness, let the black magic consume me…I wanted you so much! In the gym, I was fully prepared to kill you, not because I knew that you were the only one who could constrain the Darkness, but because I wanted you so badly I was about to kill you and then make you turn your humanity off when you came back a vampire, so we could run off and be together, tear through the world without a care…”</p><p>“But in your mind…”</p><p>“I was the pig, hiding from you, remember? The Darkness turned you to stone only because you were trying to rescue me. Otherwise, you and the Darkness would be exchanging spit in the fairy tale forest….”</p><p>“Josie, no. I refuse to believe that you didn’t care about me, the real you….”</p><p>Josie laughed darkly. “You really believe that Miss Goody Two-Shoes Headmaster’s Daughter could fall in love with the angry, loner daughter of The Great Evil?”</p><p>Hope gasped, now unsure who she was even talking to after that dagger the siphon had just plunged into her heart.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Hope,” Josie continued, softly, almost lovingly. “I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve cried about it far too much. But there’s nothing that I see that can convince me that my love for you is not a product of the darkness in me. And it hurts me too much to see you, because every time I see you, that love I feel is hijacked by the guilt I carry for everything I did while my Dark side was dominant. Every time I see you, I’m reminded of the Darkness, of being a prisoner to her, of running and hiding while she terrorized the people I loved, while she—we—plotted to turn you into a monster just like us, all so we could be happy. I’m so sorry, Hope…but that’s why I can’t stay.”</p><p>“Josie, please,” Hope pleaded again, beside herself, tears rolling down her cheeks like torrents. “Just drop the barrier and come back inside…to me…and we can talk about this, figure something out…. Wait, how did you raise a barrier if you don’t have your siphon power?”</p><p>“Jade sent me a bus ticket. Alyssa Chang intercepted it, and even when I told her it was so I could leave, she wouldn’t give it back. She wouldn’t let me escape that easily. She had conditions. She would cast a barrier that, once I left the school buildings, would ensure I could never come back. And…and…you could never follow me,” the brunette sniffled.</p><p>“Just stay right there…I’ll get Lizzie to siphon the barrier. Please, Josie!”</p><p>“Alyssa had contingencies. For you, for Lizzie, for my dad, for MG, for I don’t know how many others. She was determined to have her revenge on all of us. Lizzie won’t be able to siphon the barrier until I’m on the bus…”</p><p>“Then we’ll do a tracking spell and come get you…”</p><p>“And Alyssa made me drink an elixir that will render me invisible to tracking spells, even your black magic ones,” Josie continued with great sadness. “I’m sorry, Hope, but this is good-bye. Look after everyone, please?” With that, Josie turned away from the school, and Hope, and walked toward the gates, where a cab was waiting to take her to the bus station.</p><p>“Josie…!” Hope called out in despair. “I love you!”</p><p>The brunette never turned her head or altered her stride, nor opened her mouth in reply. She merely sobbed the rest of the way to the cab and got in without turning around.</p><p>Hope, on the other hand, fell to the ground, overcome by yet another loss. The damn Darkness. And maybe it was all her fault for bringing it out, for doing that black magic locator spell with Josie. And now, finally freed of the shackles of her rocky relationship with her ex-boyfriend, she had just lost the person she loved—and after finally confessing that love, she realized ruefully. But she still wasn’t enough for the people she loved to stay; Josie had left, forever. Hope curled up into a ball, sobbing and shaking.</p><p>By the time Hope was discovered and Alaric and Lizzie alerted, Josie was long gone. As promised, no spell, not even the darkest of Dahlia’s black magicks, could find any trace of Josie. When Hope finally made her way to her room, she found the talisman sitting on her bed (along with a note that explained, somewhat more clearly, what Josie had told her in person about the siphon’s love for the tribrid being a product of the Darkness inside). Alone in the dark, there were no more quiet things to be heard; darkness had robbed Hope of that, too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know what you think!</p><p>And if anyone would like to explore the idea that it was the dark side of Josie that loved Hope, please feel free. I’m sure I’m not the first person to have this thought (but I hadn’t seen any stories around it). I just wish the writers hadn’t left us with this inexplicable situation where close friends Hope and Josie don’t talk or interact until several episodes into the season, that we all find ourselves compelled to try to explain!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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